Sunday, January 25, 2015

Friday, January 23, 2015

No, I’m not
going to go all Falling Down or start slapping Andy around a bit, but in the past few weeks I’ve felt let down by someone who was a friend, frustrated at work and had an absolute turd laid in my lap
by the housebuilding process. NO I DON’T WANT TO TALL ABOUT IT.

None of my
complaints are particularly serious and they’re all frightfully First World but they’ve still been getting me down and simultaneously
making me angry at, well, The World, which is a little dumb. Given I’m Australian, middle class and white plenty of people could argue The
World has handed me a pretty cruisey deal.

Nevertheless,
if you too are having the worst week you could do worse than dip into my
indulgent Angry Kate playlist.

Monday, January 19, 2015

2. Why does nobody seem to be talking about Edward Norton's performance in this movie? He's tremendous. Also that coat he's wearing right now is magnificent.

3. I want to see a whole movie about Edward Norton's character.

4. Dude is, uh, looking pretty ripped for a 45-year-old.

5. Why isn't Edward Norton onscreen right now?

6. I wonder what Edward Norton's character is doing right now?

7. Don't leave me hanging, movie: what happened with Edward Norton's character and his (in)ability to get it up? Damn you, Inarritu - why are you leaving me in suspense over the state of Edward Norton's character's cock??

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” ― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Appearance:Resembling nothing so much as a fat
savoury muffin or scone (I did bake most of the batter as it appears in the pic
above, in a cake tin, but I had too much so the rest went into ramekins), this
cauliflower cake looks delicious: solid, slightly crispy on the outside and
generally extremely munchable.

Taste:Yotam assured me in his cookbook, Plenty More,that the cake would be even better the next day and I’ve
got to say ol’ Yotes did not tell a lie. I love me a bit of cold stodge – cold
roast potatoes, for example, are so very much my jam – and this cake really
delivers on that front. I have nothing against potato (what kind of madman
would?) but I feel a bit virtuous eating something like that really tastes like
a potato cake but contains cauliflower instead. My only criticism, and it’s a
minor one, is that it might tend towards the bland if you ate too much of it. I
address this problem by alternating with bites of my beetroot salad but a blob
of chutney would also go down a treat. This may strike some as wrong but I’d
also love to slice it up very finely and throw it in a toasted sandwich with
some swiss cheese. Mmmmm double stodge. Also Andy insists next time I have to bake it in a loaf tin so he can call it cauliflower log because he's super weird so, uh, that might happen.

The verdict:A future staple. This cake took kind of a long time to make last
night, in part because it was the first time I’d made it so I had to keep
referring back to the recipe. But even assuming I couldn’t reduce that
preparation/baking time it’s a worthy addition to my recipe roster because it
makes heaps and tastes a treat the next day. Ask me how I feel at the end of
the week but if I had a slice of this puppy in my lunchbox every day I’d be a
happy chappy.

Note: For anyone who cares the version of Yotam's recipe linked to above is actually slightly different to the version in his cookbook. Essentially there's just more of it: the book version uses 75ml of olive oil, 7 eggs, 150g parmesan cheese, 120g flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder and either one small cauliflower or (in my case) about three-quarters of a medium-sized one. The rest remains the same. But really you should just buy the book, cheapskate.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Sunday, January 11, 2015

God bless the good people at Previously TV for reminding me of one of my all time favourite Mad Men moments. Also a phrase I should be using more often in my daily life. All the time. (Also you really should watch the actual version with audio because Pete's delivery is... something).

1. Chocolate chips on my porridge. It started as a special treat. It's became a daily fixture. Is it wrong? I don't care. It tastes right.

2. A Visit From the Goon Squad which I'm reading about 100 years after everyone else. Despite being a keen reader I still have this weird hang-up sometimes that critically lauded books are going to be hard to get into. What a pill. So imagine my delight that this book has turned out to be a cracker.

3. The world of graphic novels. Between Saga and Y: The Last Man I feel like I've discovered (yeah, I know, shut up) a whole new genre of kinda-books to explore.

4. Trips out of town. Three days in Dunsborough and it felt like a month, in the best possible way. Must. Leave. Town. More. Often.

5. Movies. Into the Woods, Birdman and Theory of Everything will soon be mine. After a mini-drought it's exciting to be, you know, excited about so many new films coming out. Make mine a boysenberry choc bomb, thanks.

6. Friday. Well, you know, I'm only human IF YOU CUT ME DO I NOT BLEED?

N.B: The photo above comes from someone else's blog but it's a pretty fair representation of what I just finished chowing down.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

When you finish reading something you thought was amazing and you need to talk about it but you only know one other person who has read it and it came out years ago so nobody's talking about it online either and gaaaaaah.

Maybe just think about reading this graphic novel series, Y: The Last Man. I guess that's my point.